Brant Parker: 1920 - 2007

Cartoonist Brant Parker, who co-created the comic strip "The Wizard of Id" and rendered its medieval kingdom for more than three decades, has died. He was 86.

Mr. Parker died Sunday at a Lynchburg, Va., nursing home of complications related to Alzheimer's disease and a stroke suffered last year, announced Creators Syndicate, the strip's distributor.

His death came eight days after longtime "Wizard" collaborator Johnny Hart died of a stroke at 76.

The Kingdom of Id sprang to life in a New York hotel room when Mr. Parker and Hart papered the walls with two-dozen "Wizard" panels. After touring the impromptu gallery, a syndicate executive bought the strip.

Launched in 1964, "Wizard" appears in more than 1,000 newspapers.

Hart was already drawing the Stone Age strip "B.C." when he sought out Mr. Parker to help wring humor from the Middle Ages. They had met in 1950 when Mr. Parker, an artist for the Binghamton Press newspaper in upstate New York, judged a high school art contest that Hart had entered.

While Mr. Parker drew the "Wizard" pictures, Hart came up with the gags that they refined together.

"It's two different kinds of thinking, always," Mr. Parker told the Los Angeles Times in 1986. "The trick is to find two people who are basically alike. ... We both enjoy the same kind of humor, so it's been a great relationship."

It endured until 1997, when Mr. Parker turned the "Wizard" drawing over to his son, Jeff, who had served a decadelong apprenticeship. "The Wizard of Id" will continue as a collaboration between the Parker and Hart families, according to Creators Syndicate.

Set in a castle, "Wizard" follows the oppressed people of a rundown kingdom dominated by a small tyrant known simply as "the King."

"The original premise was built around the Wizard goofing up and everything backfiring